“Sometimes,” she said softly.

“No, you’re not—­not honourably!  Kings can’t be happy with commoners!  They don’t speak the same language.  If you’re happy it’s because you let yourself consciously come down.  And—­wallow.  As I have—­”

Her face flamed to think how he had seen through her.  He saw it, and cried triumphantly: 

“I knew it!  In the higher parts of you you’re always adventuring, always lonely, always hungry.  As I am.  You never find a harbour, a friend, a feast.  Do you?  No, I don’t need you to tell me.  I know all about it.  I have known it for more years than you have lived yet.”

“But really, I am happy sometimes,” she protested.  He caught her hands and held them so that she had to look at him.

“With Louis?  Is your brain happy with Louis?  Do you ever come within touching distance of each other?  Is your spirit happy with Louis?  Isn’t it always hungry, holding out begging hands?  Are your brain and your spirit not always calling you back and scorning you when you let your body wallow—­slacken and take cheap thrills?”

“Oh, it’s wicked that you should know these things about me,” she cried.

“No.  It isn’t wicked at all.  I know the same about myself.  I’ve taken cheap things.  Biology got me on the wrong tack at first; with a biological mind I saw everything via the body.  Biology’s a dragon one has to slay; that’s why, in my work, I’ve taken to psychology instead.  Love-making!  I told you, right at the first, I always made love to women—.  I always have done it, and always should have gone on doing it if I had never met you.”

“But why—­if you despise it?”

“I wasn’t doing it as an end.  It was a means.  All the adorable, tender prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I’d arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality.  Never!  Ugh, they were soft!  Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain!  Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh—­soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands.  You’re the only woman I’ve ever thought much about and not made love to!  To you I couldn’t make love—­”

“Whatever is this, then?” she asked faintly.

“This is one king coming to another, asking his alliance, his comradeship!  You there, with that man—­that jelly thing!  You sicken, nauseate me.  It’s like seeing a queen go on the streets!  Marcella, you can’t do these things, you know.  You’re letting down your spiritual caste.  You and I—­we’ve been along lower paths.  There wasn’t really any disgust in it then, because we were adventuring, finding each other.  But if we go on the lower paths now we’re doing a thing that’s damnable.  All my life I’ve waited for the wonder that should come round the corner.  So have you.  And here it is, for both of us—­”

“How many love affairs did you tell me you had had?” she broke in, in a queerly casual voice.